Talking to Myself

I’m gonna share a story of a mistake I made. Maybe you’ve made the same one, maybe not, but here goes. There’s a particular medicine that Nolan takes around 4pm everyday and we’re really good at not missing it or anything like that. So sometime last year I came home from work and literally saw my wife giving Nolan that particular medicine. About 30 minutes later I had one of my patented Chris Perez brain farts. It suddenly occurred to me, “Hold up, we didn’t give Nolan his med!” So I drew some up and gave it to him. Bam! Go me! Right? Right? Nope. I told my wife, “Hey I gave him his 4:00” and she was like “Uh…I already gave it to him”…and then suddenly it felt like I was hit by a bus. OHHHHHHH NOOOO….what did I do? WHAT DID I DO?! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod he’s gonna get sick and it’s all my fault!

So I got on the phone and frantically called the cardiologist, all the while feeling incredibly guilty. He told me not to worry, just to skip his evening dose and – you know – don’t do that again. Crisis averted. Nolan was 100% fine. Me? Not so much. Because you know what happened, and maybe you’ve been there yourself: the self-talk begins. You big dummy. How can you let this happen? This is your kid, you could’ve killed him. Don’t be so stupid next time. And on and on. Yeah, you’ve been there too, I bet.

Self-talk is a really fascinating thing because we can often use it to encourage ourselves, drum up some bravery, and push ourselves to better places. But quite often our self-talk is just an effort to sabotage ourselves. Want to know the person who tries to cut you down the most? Look in the mirror. Harsh, I know…but you know it’s true. But I learned something that helped me think a little more about my self-talk, and it came from my job. So one of my responsibilities is to conduct orientation for all new hires at the hospital where I work. I actually kinda enjoy it and use the opportunity to tell Nolan’s story in an effort to teach teammates to use empathy more. One of the best parts of orientation, though, is when our Chaplain comes to speak to the group about Compassion Fatigue. You’ve read about it here on this blog (if you haven’t, read it here) and you know that I think it’s so important. Anyways, after this medicine mix-up happened, I was standing in the back of the auditorium listening to this portion of the orientation and the Chaplain said something that really helped me see things differently.

He was talking about self-talk and how harsh we can be on ourselves. He asked this question that really stopped me in my tracks: “If your best friend messes up or makes a mistake, would you talk to them the same way you talk to yourself when you mess up?” and I was like WHOA. This is incredibly true: I’d never talk to my best friend the same way…I’d try to be encouraging and supportive and give him a pep talk. Me? I’m the moron. If I talked to my best friend that way, he’d really dislike me. Big time.

So this really made me think about how I talk to myself. Because listen: you’re going to screw up…we’re not perfect people, we’re not perfect parents – and when you add a CHD into the mix, well…it just gets even more bonkers. So I think we owe it to ourselves to watch how we talk to ourselves. We owe it to ourselves – and our kiddos – to be the best version of us we can be, and that includes mentally. If we cut ourselves down for even the tiniest of mistakes, that only makes us feel worse about ourselves and in turn contributes further to our Compassion Fatigue. And before we know it, it’s a vicious cycle.

So before you start beating yourself up, stop for a second and think about whether you’d talk to your best friend – or even your own kid – that way. And consider changing the way you talk to the man in the mirror. It’s bound to be better for your mental health and I think you’ll find out you can accomplish way more when you encourage yourself!